Sunny Y. Auyang

Abstract: Introduction 1. Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics 2. Relativity and symmetries 3. Quantum field theory 4. Objects of experiences: Quantum states-observables-statistics 5. The event-structure and the spatio-temporal order: local fields 6. Explicit relations and the causal order: Interacting fields 7. Epilogue Appendix A: Measurement and probability: Quantity, quality, modality Appendix B: Fiber bundles Appendix C: The cosmic and the microscopic: An application Notes Bibliography

Abstract: Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, astrophysics, particle physics: We live in an engineered world, one where the distinctions between science and engineering, technology and research, are fast disappearing. This book shows how, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the goals of natural scientists - to discover what was not known - and that of engineers - to create what did not exist - are undergoing an unprecedented convergence. Sunny Y. Auyang ranges widely in demonstrating that engineering today is not only a collaborator with science but its equal. In concise accounts of the emergence of industrial laboratories and chemical and electrical engineering, and in whirlwind histories of the machine tools and automobile industries and the rise of nuclear energy and information technology, her book presents a broad picture of modern engineering: its history, structure, technological achievements, and social responsibilities; its relation to natural science, business administration, and public policies. Auyang uses case studies such as the development of the F-117A Nighthawk and Boeing 777 aircraft, as well as the experiences of engineer-scientists such as Oliver Heaviside, engineer-entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford and Bill Gates, and engineer-managers such as Alfred Sloan and Jack Welch to give readers a clear sense of engineering's essential role in the future of scientific research.

Abstract: Sunny Auyang tackles what she calls "the large pictures of the human mind," exploring the relevance of cognitive science findings to everyday mental life. Auyang proposes a model of an "open mind emerging from the self-organization of infrastructures," which she opposes to prevalent models that treat mind as a disembodied brain or computer, subject to the control of external agents such as neuroscientists and programmers. Although cognitive science has obtained abundant data on neural and computational processes, it barely explains such ordinary experiences as recognizing faces, feeling pain, or remembering the past. In this book Sunny Auyang tackles what she calls "the large pictures of the human mind," exploring the relevance of cognitive science findings to everyday mental life. Auyang proposes a model of an "open mind emerging from the self-organization of infrastructures," which she opposes to prevalent models that treat mind as a disembodied brain or computer, subject to the control of external agents such as neuroscientists and programmers. Her model consists of three parts: (1) the open mind of our conscious life; (2) mind's infrastructure, the unconscious processes studied by cognitive science; and (3) emergence, the relation between the open mind and its infrastructure. At the heart of Auyang's model is the mind that opens to the world and makes it intelligible. A person with an open mind feels, thinks, recognizes, believes, doubts, anticipates, fears, speaks, and listens, and is aware of I, together with it and thou. Cognitive scientists refer to the "binding problem," the question of how myriad unconscious processes combine into the unity of consciousness. Auyang approaches the problem from the other end -- by starting with everyday experience rather than with the mental infrastructure. In so doing, she shows both how analyses of experiences can help to advance cognitive science and how cognitive science can help us to understand ourselves as autonomous subjects.

Abstract: Foreword, Stanley M. Burstein Introduction: Mirrors from the Deep Past Part I. The Roman Republic and Pre-Imperial China 1. Nation Formation 2. State Building 3. Empire Building 4. Winning the Peace Part II. The Roman and Early Chinese Empires 5. Courses of Empire 6. Arts of Government 7. Strategies of Superpower 8. Decline and Fall

Abstract: A review of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, 1991. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 308pp. ISBN 0262720213. $30.00 USD.

Abstract: The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7-12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic "A-not-B error," infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location "A" continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location "B." Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of "knowing" not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span.

Abstract: In recent years, members of the steering committee of the IEEE Requirements Engineering (RE) Conference have discussed paper classification and evaluation criteria for RE papers. The immediate trigger for this discussion was our concern about differences in opinion that sometimes arise in program committees about the criteria to be used in evaluating papers. If program committee members do not all use the same criteria, or if they use criteria different from those used by authors, then papers might be rejected or accepted for the wrong reasons. Surely not all papers should be evaluated according to the same criteria. Some papers describe new techniques but do not report on empirical research; others describe new conceptual frameworks for investigating certain RE problems; others report on industrial experience with existing RE techniques. Other kinds of papers can also be easily recognized. All of these types of papers should be evaluated according to different criteria. But we are far from a consensus about what classes of paper we should distinguish, and what the criteria are for each of these classes.